Wanderings and … wonderings.

The highlight of The Jackal (1997) is seeing Bruce Willis’ inscrutable assassin inhabit a range of progressively goofy disguises and get away with it. In a rare villainous role, you never know what elaborate wig he’s going to don from one scene to the next.

One wishes it would just focus on this promising procedural stuff, as did its progenitor, instead of the needless Richard Gere IRA backstory. And his entire character arc. And his ‘accent’. Our funny intro to him is of the lad shadow boxing in his cell. How original! What writing! This movie also pushes the absurd fallacy that the Russian police – in the epoch of peak Yeltsin state gangsterism – were trying to smash the mafia. Give this motion picture points for trying too hard.

Sidney Poitier adds the expected gravitas in a role that would have worked better with him as the deuteragonist.

It’s entertaining trash and I recommend it. But I don’t think Roger Ebert liked it much:

‘There was never a moment in “The Jackal” where I had the slightest confidence in the expertise of the characters. The Jackal strikes me as the kind of overachiever who, assigned to kill a mosquito, would purchase contraband insecticides from Iraq and bring them into the United States by hot air balloon, distilling his drinking water from clouds and shooting birds for food.’